Heredity

Genetics is exploding. In the space of a few years, hundreds of genes,
responsible for tragic diseases, have been discovered. The genome (/structure of the genome)  the DNA
hidden in our cells  has been mapped out [1]. Today the world is on the
threshold of a revolution that will have a drastic effect on both body and
mind. It has already been announced  contrary to all moral standards
(/without reference to any questions of ethics)  that human embryos have
successfully been cloned! Aren't we going too far, too fast by trying to
apply new techniques, not to our maladies but to our whole personality? And
won't we be tempted tomorrow to provide biological and genetic solutions for
purely social problems? Will we be able to avoid mistakes (/slips, blunders)
when, if we get that far, we have tracked down the genetic predispositions
of our every last behaviour trait (/pattern)?

Scientists, then, treat the subject (/matter) with kid gloves. "Dynamite",
"Everything is open to misinterpretation", freely admit those who try to
define the genetic bases (/foundations) of human behaviour. Can people's
violence, their proneness to alcoholism, their intelligence, their ability
to control, their submissiveness, their timidity, their sexual propensities,
etc., be directly attributed or not to the DNA of their chromosomes? Does
our behaviour carry the biological traces of our parents? If so, are they
dominant? "Like father like son", goes the popular saying. "The apple never falls far from the tree", says another. True or false? An important question, which has taken on new meaning with the findings of studies on
twins and the dazzling progress of molecular biology. A question as old as
philosophy, and one that preoccupied Plato, as early as four centuries
before Christ. "He believed in the transmission (/handing down) of the
fundamental nature of man, inherited from the father," explains Michel
Duyme, a geneticist and psychologist at the CNRS (French national centre for
scientific research). And even in the possibility of improving the human
race!

Notes. 1. Cf. Toronto Star, 24 octobre 2002: "With the discovery of the detailed map
of the human genome — the 3 billion bits of information that lie encoded in the DNA of most human cells — comes promise as well as peril, says a scientist who is one of the driving forces behind the genomics revolution."